


strike for love and strike for fear

by silverscream



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, happens a couple of months after the book, happy midwinter tinkering and loads of snow, mostly just domesticity, old lizard that he is, sarkan introspecting because he does that, terrible humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-23 05:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13183536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverscream/pseuds/silverscream
Summary: “What in the name of all that is saint and holy are you doing?”His voice cuts through the frozen air, its bite willing to be sharper than the cold, and failing miserably at that.The creature across the clearing continues tinkering with pots and fir branches and wood-handled knives, wrangling them into something on the grand table that marks the length of her porch.“What’s it look like to you?” she asks, clear in the bright midday light, the warm air visibly puffing in clouds around her mouth and nose.





	strike for love and strike for fear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [taywen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/gifts).



> the title is from the intro song of Frozen, aptly named "Frozen Heart", which I heartily recommend listening to!
> 
> Happy Christmas!

 

 

“What in the name of all that is saint and holy are you doing?”

 

His voice cuts through the frozen air, its bite willing to be sharper than the cold, and failing miserably at that.

 

The creature across the clearing continues tinkering with pots and fir branches and wood-handled knives, wrangling them into something on the grand table that marks the length of her porch.

 

“What’s it look like to you?” she asks, clear in the bright midday light, the warm air visibly puffing in clouds around her mouth and nose.

 

Sarkan arches a brow, unimpressed with her bravado. “Gathering frostbite on your fingers, following in them falling off,” a pointed glare to the tips of them, red and swollen as they peek from her mittens.

 

“It’s not so bad,” she grins, wiggling them for good measure, and masking a wince at what must be quite a bit of pain. He rolls his eyes and goes closer, muttering under his breath, as he throws a look at the notes scribbled on pieces of rumpled paper, holly and ivy and berries strewn across the wooden surface, before taking one of Agnieszka’s hands in his and breathing a spell of warmth into her skin.

 

She looks up at that, a smudge of soot on the bridge of her upturned nose, cheeks flushed by the cold and kissed by the winter sun,

 

“Even better, now.” and she turns back to her work, one handed and grinning.

 

“And what brought you down from the tower on this very fine day?” her fingers escape his grasp, toy with the buttons of his woolen mantle and brush a lint of his shoulder, before deftly braiding some more fir into the wreath she’s making.

 

“A rather discouraging lack of firewood,” he answers blankly, prompting a knowing smile, an impish “ _oh_?” slipping between the verses of whatever song she’s humming, which has him add, “and of good company.”

 

Pleased like the cat that got the cream, she ties the crown together, acorns and berries glinting with frost, her nose scrunching as her smile widens.

 

Not long ago, Sarkan would have given himself quite the grief over the softness he knows must appear plain on his face, but that is a feeling he has stopped fighting in the last year or so. Months that harried his soul a bit more than what he’d bargained for, under the relentless scrutiny of those dark eyes and mismatched spells; throaty laughter chasing him off to sleep and the pain of a sleeping arm waking him up come morning. That, or a mouthful of tangled hair, which was more likely than not.

 

“And you?” he speaks, an unusual touch of tenderness warming his throat, and he turns to the many wreaths scrambled on her worktable.

 

“Presents, obviously,” she huffs, trying to wrangle her hair out of her face. She’d braided some of it away the night before, and knotted most of it on top of her head, but sleep, preceded by his own fingers, had seen to it that it did not remain that way, so now the mane fell down over her back, curled and messy, reaching below her hips.

 

“For whom?” Sarkan absently tries to take a branch out of the hair it had snagged on, somewhere behind her elbow.

 

She clucks her tongue, “Take a guess, o _wise one_.”

 

Making a show of humouring her, he taps a gloved finger on his chin, feeling the cold through his thick, woolen shirt.

 

“The one with bells hanging on it must be for your mother,” he announces after a moment’s consideration.

 

Not missing a beat, and with enough cheek to have made him roll her eyes, had his lids not frozen into place,“And how have you come to that conclusion?”

 

“You wanted to make music for her, she’d complained about silence in the house when she kneads her dough.”

 

“Bravo, my old lizard,” dipped in fondness, and he bristles at the petname she’s given him, but before he can respond, her cold nose hits his cheek, and she steals a featherlight kiss.

 

“Guess another?”

 

Rolling his eyes at her antics in truth, he correctly matches the smaller ones for their intended recipients, the headwoman from Dvernik, Agnieszka’s brothers and their children, and misses some, too, for good measure, one for a girl from Olshanka, who’d given birth halfway through autumn, another large and filled with mistletoe for _Solya_ , of all people (“and it won’t poison him, either, well, unless he eats the berries, like his feathery counterparts are wont to do”).

 

There is one charmed to smell like spices and frost and the valley for ever more, which is meant for Kasia, to remind her of home in the saltwater air of Gidna, and a another for Sarkan’s own laboratory, “ _to help clear his mind and right his spells_ ”, which he accepts with a kiss and the certainty that it’ll make him miss landings and stumble over his own two feet, misgivings which she greets with snorts and pleased smiles.

 

“And this?” he asks, holding out the last remaining one, a simple thing, tangled and familiar in a way that the others weren’t, careless, but in a sweet and merry way.

 

Without uttering a word, she picks it up from his careful fingers, and gingerly places it atop her own head, brown curls circling softly and holding it snug, but not uncomfortably tight to her skull.

 

Sarkan smiles at the sight, and burrows deeper in the fur of his coat, the air having gotten colder once the sun passed its highest point. She starts gathering her wreaths and storing them away to be gifted, while Sarkan occupies himself with a candle from her table, a thick thing, a brownish red wax Agnieszka has made herself in the last days of summer, while he’d offered her tips on improving its consistency.

 

He takes off a fur lined glove and, thinking of the fireplace in her cottage - a deceptively small thing with a mouth that seemed to chew dead wood and swallow it with satisfaction, then ooze warmth indiscriminately, he closes his eyes, and lights the candle with the tips of his fingers.

 

A groan bellows inside the house, like the creature had just come awake and smoke starts coming up the chimney. The trick is nifty, he’ll have to admit, even if he and Agnieszka have yet to figure out how to make the thing stop once they can barely breathe for the heat, which mostly ends in them opening all windows to the night air, which - _counterproductive_.

 

But such things are commonplace these days, as the Wood, corrupted or not, has its own brand of wicked humour, which Sarkan appreciates less than his witch does, and more than he’d ever thought he would, a century ago.

 

And - _his witch_. The girl herself, brash and loud and tangled in her own spells, limbs and hair. It’s been odd decades since last he’d felt affection of the sort for another human being, and little of it was as sincere as this. He’d longed for silence for as long as he can remember, and at the first glance, she offers him anything but. It is not a shift in his existence he could have foretold or prevented, not that he’d want to, truly - but it is a good life. They have each their dens, and she longs for the wild Wood, just as he does for the orderly rooms of his tower in the valley, and it it pleasant, meeting in the middle-

 

Something cold and wet hits him in the back of his neck, dripping beneath his collar and Sarkan _yelps_ -

 

“ _You!_ ”

 

“Me!” she laughs, clear as ice, flushed and already having another snowball at the ready.

 

He spits out a curse and before he can grab enough snow, she nails another hit, smack in his forehead.

 

“Your face!” Giggling, Nieshka bolts, lightfooted like a deer, if not half as graceful, looking for shelter.

 

Scoffing at the snowball taking form in his hands, Sarkan stretches back his shoulders under the heavy coat, and arches his brows, the gleam of magic bright at the edge of his vision, cutting sharp and

 

“Not _fair_!” She shouts, as a whole pine tree unloads the snow off it’s branches on her.

 

“All’s fair!” is his response as he ducks, already expecting her counter.

 

By the end of it, Sarkan is fairly certain he’s got snow in his socks, both pairs of them, and down his throat, which isn’t at all helped when, in a last attempt to gain the upper hand, the wildcat tackles him to the ground, burrowing the both of them in a mountain of snow.

 

A soft ooof escapes her as he rolls her underneath, the heels of her boots digging into his calves, and her hair caught under them both, and she laughs, deep from her chest, with her red freckled face and even redder lips with a wicked gleam in her eyes. It takes him a second to realise he is laughing, too.

 

She sees her chance, having him momentarily distracted, and steals a kiss. Tasting snow and heat and mulled wine from the mug on her table (it’s now on the ground, with her notes, utensils, and one of Sarkan’s gloves), in her mouth, he wraps his arms around her, the bulk of his wet winter clothes drenching the simple shirt she has on. He kisses her back with ardour, her lips and her chin and the snowflakes on her lashes, and she climbs into his lap and laughs into his neck.

 

 

“I’m _cold_ ,” she wheezes, clouds forming where she’s breathing hard above him. Her hair is covered in frost, the crown still hanging on, but her shirt is wet, as are her mittens, and her once-bright red skirts, too, fraying at their edges. His hands rest underneath them, on the wool stockings she wears, thick over her thighs.

 

Rolling his eyes and muttering nonsense under his breath, much to her amusement, he rises as well as he can, without falling back face first into the snow, slips an arm under her knees and the other around her back and hoists both of them up, making his perilous way to the door of her undoubtedly heated cottage.

 

“ _You abominable creature_ ,” he whispers and she smiles, wide and - _happy_ , and the bite in his words turns soft, “you are going to freeze.”

 

She chuckles at that, arms wrapped around his shoulders. “A good thing I have you to keep me warm, then.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
